Mattie Mitchell (15 page)

They hadn't seen any other human since the day they had left
the coast weeks ago. He saw no movement. There was nothing.
But something had alerted his Indian guide. He was about to ask
what it was when Mattie spoke again, his voice low and even, his
lips barely moving.

“Dere—wood junk knocked from pile since we gone.” As he
spoke his head kept turning around, his eyes hawk-like, searching.

Worcester looked toward the small pile of firewood. He had
helped gather the bits and pieces of firewood before they had left
the campground. It was Mattie's way to always have a supply of
firewood on hand. This was a comforting welcome when returning
to camp long after dark, tired and sometimes wet and cold. But
Worcester would not have paid attention to one lone piece of
firewood resting near the pile. To him it was meaningless. But to
his keen-eyed guide it meant a great deal.

Satisfied there was no one around—at least outside of his
wigwam—Mattie spoke once more. “Stay 'ere, preacher.”
It was a rare order from him. And with that the Indian crept
silently, half bent, on a diagonal course toward the wigwam's
covered doorway. With a fluid stride he reached the doorway in
seconds. Bending down to ground level, he lifted the caribou-hide doorway a few inches. Mattie peered inside, fearing the
scant light allowed might startle any intruder lurking inside his
wilderness home.

He was looking for a set of feet or lower legs, figuring anyone
waiting inside would be staring at the door and not the ground.
For several minutes he looked all around. He could see no one.
He listened intently but could hear nothing.

Standing up, he threw back the hide and stepped inside his
dwelling. Worcester arrived behind him tense and breathless, the
deep concern of his guide exciting him. He stopped at the edge
of the doorway, reluctant to follow Mattie inside. Mattie emerged
shortly and without speaking to Worcester walked briskly to the
woodpile. He appeared to be angry. Worcester had never seen
him angry or the least bit upset.

He walked to where the Indian was standing. Mattie picked
up the junk of birch wood, laid it back on the pile, and again
glanced all around the campsite. Small patches of well-trod earth
were visible in several places around the site, the result of years
of human and animal passage. On the edge of the clearing and
opposite the way the two men had come was such a spot. It faced
a natural lead into the trees and appeared to be a logical way for
man or beast to leave the site.

Mattie walked to the spot of bared earth and studied it.
Worcester followed him but remained standing. Neither of the
men spoke. Worcester had not seen the man in such a state of
deep concentration. Finally, Worcester had to speak.

“What is it Mattie?”

Mattie spoke in his normal voice, the tension evidently gone
out of him. “Some man 'ere this day. Not long since. One hour,
maybe. Not good man.”

Worcester stared at the ground. At first he saw nothing, but
then he spotted it: the clear partial footprint of a man.

“Maybe it is our track, Mattie.”

Mattie looked at Worcester and in a patient voice replied,
“Not your track. Too wide, no 'eel. Not my track. Dis man ver'
big feet. Dis man running, leave deep track on one side of foot.”

Worcester looked again at the man spoor, trying to figure the
Indian's reasoning. Mattie was right about one thing. The boot
that had made this print would not fit him. Mattie had big feet,
but the track was clearly bigger than Mattie's. Worcester looked
at his own boots. It wasn't his boot print, either. There was a
much deeper print along one side of the track.

Worcester was still puzzled. “How do you know the time he
was here and why do you think he was a bad man? Maybe he was
just passing through the campsite.”

Just as patiently as before, Mattie spoke as if he were teaching
his own son the lore of the woods. “Dis man's weight push small
twig into soft groun' without break. Twig not yet swing back.
Why good man run from camp?” Mattie shook his head before
continuing. “No, I'm sure. Bad man. Good man stop fer tea, we
talk trapline way. This man go quick, knock over wood junk. Ver'
stupid man.”

Worcester knew he had much to learn about the ways of the
wild, but he also knew that he had just learned a valuable lesson
today. When the signs that were there for him to see with his
own eyes had been pointed out to him, he felt inadequate. He
had been educated at Columbia University where he received a
bachelors degree with the highest of honours. He had excelled at
his studies at the University of Leipzig in Germany. But here, in
the wilderness where a man had only his wits to get him by, right
now he didn't feel like he was a good student.

Back inside the camp, Worcester walked to his bunk and
was reaching down for his duffle bag to get his last pair of clean
stockings when he noticed his bag was missing.

“Mattie, my duffle is gone! You were right, someone has
been here.”

Both men looked around for the bag. Mattie was turning to
go outside when Worcester called to him. “Wait, Mattie. I did not
leave my sleeping robe there in a pile.”

In the dingy light of the wigwam, he hadn't noticed it until
now. Mattie turned and watched Worcester pull his heavy
sleeping blanket away from the floor beside his bunk where it
had been thrown in a lump. Underneath the dark blanket gaped
the opened mouth of his duffle, its contents spilled and strewn
about. Whoever had been here had rifled through Worcester's
things and then covered them with his sleeping robe. Mattie's
scant belongings were all intact and in place.

Worcester paled. He had left money in a leather pouch in the
bottom of his duffle bag. It was nowhere to be seen among the
rest of his ransacked belongings.

“My money has been stolen!” he exclaimed in a hoarse,
disbelieving cry.

He searched the ground frantically for his money. When he
stood from his crawling search, he realized he was alone. Outside
again, he found the Indian standing over the lone footprint as
before.

“Have you found anything, Mattie?”

But Mattie Mitchell had not been searching for anything. He
turned to the man who had become his friend. His dark eyes were
angry and fierce to look upon.

“We find nudding. Man come fer money. He leave running
with money. When dark come, I get your money back.”

And with that, the angry Mi'kmaq walked back inside
the wigwam and began building a campfire for their supper.
Reaching up to cut a chunk of meat from a haunch of caribou
that hung from the slanted ceiling, he noticed the thief had also
helped himself to almost half of their meat supply. It only added
to Mattie's determination to find the man. And when he did find
him, he would pay dearly for stealing from Mattie Mitchell.

Worcester told Mattie his purse had contained $550. It was
money to pay his passage back to the States, to pay for provisions,
and to pay Mattie for his guiding services. Mattie had never
owned that much money in his life and doubted if he had ever
seen so much money at one time. But for him it was more than
that. His ire would have been the same if the stolen money had
amounted to only a few dollars.

He would have gladly shared the piece of venison with any
man. It was the way of the trail. For a man to enter another
trapper's camp and take just a little food to help him to his own
camp was acceptable. Such a man would leave a sign indicating
he had done so. He would never touch or take any personal items
belonging to another trapper. The man who had been in their
camp had not come by chance. He had come to steal from the
American, and while he was here he had decided to help himself
to a sizable amount of their food.

As the two men ate their evening meal, their minds were on
nothing else but the thief. Worcester agonized about the loss of
such a large sum of money, but he could see that Mattie had an
overwhelming sense of a great injustice that had been perpetrated
against him. It was if something sacred had been taken from
him, and it wasn't the meat or the money. He couldn't get past
knowing that someone had actually come to this remote valley,
had watched them, waited until they left the camp, and then had
entered his camp to steal from them.

Dusk came down from the hills and brought with it the dark
of night. Small, flickering strands of firelight mingled with the
moving man-shadows inside the camp. Outside, the long autumn
night had come. Nothing Worcester could say would deter his
guide from this venture. He would leave in the darkness. Mattie
assured him that he would return by the “grey dawn time” with
his money.

“Take my rifle, Mattie,” Worcester offered.

He had seen Mattie cast admiring glances over the expensive
hunting weapon. Mattie owned an old, well-used, 1871 model
Martin Henry rifle, a very heavy, self-cocking, lever action,
breech-loading weapon that produced a frightening roar that was
matched only by its shoulder-punching recoil.

“Long gun slow me down in dark time. I have good knife.”

Mattie placed his right hand on the hilt of the big knife strapped
to his side. Worcester knew it was a Bowie knife, which had been
given to Mattie by another satisfied American sportsman several
years ago.

The nearly foot-long blade was a formidable tool and could
become a fearsome weapon at close quarters, especially at night.
Designed by Colonel James Bowie in 1830 and forged by James
Black, the swedge, or top edge of the knife, was curved away
from its deadly point and gleamed with sharpness. Jim Bowie
was killed in 1836 at the battle of San Antonio, Texas. The bloody
knife in his hand that carried his name had been unable to save
him.

PULLING THE STRAPS OF HIS PACK
—he went nowhere without
it—tight against his shoulders, Mattie stepped out into the chilly
night. Worcester followed him through the narrow doorway
and caught the barest glimpse of the tall figure crossing the
campground as he entered the trace beyond the thief's boot print.

“Have a care, Mattie. God go with you,” he said into the
night. But he got no answer and stepped back into the warmth of
the wigwam, the skin door rustling as it closed behind him.

Standing in the forest gloom only a few steps away from the
campground, Mattie waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Campfire light weakened a man's eyesight, but few men could
resist staring into the age-old warmth. Knowing his eyes would
restore themselves to his keen night vision, he waited and thought
about the thief. He knew who it was, but he had not told the
preacher man. He heard Worcester give him his blessing.

Maybe he is a priest after all,
he thought.

Mattie hated people who stole things and could always tell
them at first meeting. They seldom looked a man in the face when
talking, but rather averted their eyes, as if fearing others could
see into their evil minds. When they stood among a crowd, they
frequently cast furtive glances around them, as if anticipating
their own nefarious intentions were being planned back upon
them. They always boasted of their wilderness feats when in
their cups, seated in their musky beer dives, where Mattie was
not welcomed nor cared to enter. But when they were in the
country, and when night came, they hid inside their hastily built
log shanties and opened their doors only a crack to piss out into
the long, dark night they so dreaded and feared.

Mattie always avoided their company. Such men carried their
bravado well when strutting through the small communities,
feeling secure among their own by day and where lamplight
glinted from every well-built home at night. They talked down
to Mattie at their rare meetings with him, berating the Indian's
knowledge at every given opportunity and boasting about their
own exploits. Mattie never answered them and only rarely spoke
of his wilderness abilities. But away from the security of the
villages and deep in the unmarked forested hills, they feared the
big woodsman and crossed his trail only by accident: they feared
the mystique of the man; they envied his hunting and fishing
prowess; they longed to know the secrets of his trapping skills;
they feared his ghost-like manner of easy walking. They feared
him because they did not know and could not even begin to
understand his way.

Thinking about the thief left a burning hatred in Mattie's gut.
He wondered if he would kill him when he found him. Away
from the campground, he made his way through the dark forest.
There was no moon or starlight to help guide his feet along. If he
was right about the identity of the thief, he knew the man would
not travel far in the dark. However, if the man had run from their
camp an hour or so before dark, he could be three or more miles
away by now.

There was one thing about the suspected thief that was in
Mattie's favour: the man was afraid of the dark. He would not be
wandering in the night through a forest he knew little about. This
was what Mattie was counting on. He stopped several times and
studied the skyline. He knew the shapes of all the mountains and
ridges that showed against the sky. It was a mental map to guide
his way along. Twice he climbed to high vantage points to spend
several minutes searching for a sign.

On one high ridge he stepped up to a large she-spruce tree
suitable for climbing. The lower branches hung down and some
of them were even embedded in the earth around its huge trunk.
Between the bole of the tree and the outer edges of its downward-growing limbs was a circular dry space. Mattie had spent many
a comfortable night in such a place. The branches of the big old
tree were sturdy and close together. They would make his climb
hard, but he grasped a branch anyway and pulled his long body
up. The tangly limbs scratched his face and hands as he went.

It took him several minutes of hard climbing to reach more
than half the height of the tree. Standing on a limb and clinging
onto the tree trunk, he stared all around the country. His fingers
were coated with the tree's sticky, scented myrrh. He rubbed them
together, trying to remove the gluey substance. For a long while
he saw nothing, and for a minute he doubted his reasoning. Then
he saw what he was looking for. A glimmer of firelight showed
itself in the distance, and once he was sure he saw a few rising
flankers!

Mattie smiled in satisfaction. Now he knew he was right. The
man he was following had stopped and, in typical white man
fashion, had built a huge fire. There was a saying Mattie had for
their kind: “Indian light fire for warm. White man light fire for
fear.”

The thief was one of them. Instead of building a small, low fire
and burning dry, seasoned wood that would give off little smoke
and no telling sparks, the man had built a bonfire. The Indian had
little respect for such a man. In fact, he felt insulted. Did the man
think he could just walk into his camp, steal from my “sport,”
take his food, and expect him not to come after him? This man
would regret the day he had stolen from Mattie Mitchell.

Staring at the distant firelight, which flared and sometimes
died away, Mattie knew exactly how to get to the man. A valley
near him held a small, swiftly running stream that flowed toward
a broad, deep river that lay in the thief's path. He had probably
left a canoe hidden close to the river for his hurried retreat back
to the coast. Mattie had pulled many muskrat from that brook
and had walked those riverbanks since he was a young man. He
guessed the distance between him and the thief was no more than
one easy mile.

Down from the tree and with the direction he was to follow
clear in his head, he pulled the pack over his shoulders and
headed down over the rim without further thought. There was
no need to hurry now. This man wasn't going anywhere until the
day came again.

The anger that had possessed him when he left the camp and
the preacher had subsided. It was a feeling he was not used to.
He was seldom angry at anything. Still, he didn't know how he
would react when he confronted the man who had stolen what
belonged to Preacher.

HUNCHED DOWN A SAFE DISTANCE AWAY
from his blazing
fire, the man who had stolen from Mattie Mitchell's camp was
terrified. He wasn't a brave man at the best of times and he
regretted what he had done. More than that, he regretted where
he was and hated and feared the night.

When Mattie had left the hamlet with the rich American to go
caribou hunting, he had listened to the talk around town. No one
believed the stranger was of the clergy. This American man had
money. No minister around here had wealth. Most of them barely
got by with the scant donations from their parishioners and their
own food gathered from the land and the sea.

The thief had fought against his own inner judgment and his
greed won out. The American would certainly take his money
with him. He knew that when they reached the caribou barrens,
Mattie and his “sport” would be away from their campsite for
hours, maybe even days at a time. Looking back on what he had
done, the thief smiled. He could hardly believe he had succeeded.
He had followed Mattie for two days and as many nights—
granted, two nights huddled in the bushes shaking in fear and
without a campfire. Only his greed for the American money kept
him going. He had run out of food. Luckily, Mattie Mitchell had
left some caribou meat behind.

He had hesitated before cutting the bulk of the meat from the
hanging caribou quarter. The money—purse and all—belonged
to the American, but the meat belonged to Mattie Mitchell.
However, his hunger had defeated his caution and his greed
directed his hand.

The thief had not even stopped to count the money until
just before dark came. He had put several miles behind him,
he figured, though he knew he had deviated from his original
course. Stumbling upon the bubbling brook more by accident
than plan, he was relieved to discover that it was the way back
to the river where his leaky canoe waited. He hated the dark.
Behind every shadow lurked his fears. The night sounds always
startled him.

A roaring fire that demanded constant fuel allayed his fears
some and he began to relax. He had pulled it off, done what no
one else had ever done. He had stolen from the famed Mattie
Mitchell and was beginning to feel proud of his feat. After all,
Mattie was nothing more than a damn Indian. What gave him the
right to take rich Americans into the hills anyway? Maybe Mattie
would steal the money himself. Everyone knew the Indians were
nothing more than lazy, good-for-nothing thieves.

Well, by God, this white man wasn't afraid of Mattie
Mitchell. He would be the talk of his drinking buddies. The idea
of drinking brought the money to mind. How much was in the
fancy leather purse? How much rum would it buy? He wondered
if it was American money. Spending foreign currency in the local
community would arouse suspicion, for sure, but he knew where
it could be done easily enough.

Unable to wait any longer, he yanked the purse from his
pocket, squirmed closer to the crackling fire, and pulled the wad
of bills free in one excited motion. He gasped when he saw the
money. He had not expected it to be so much. The talk around the
village was right. The American was rich and clearly not a man
of the cloth.

There must be thousands of dollars here!

He shuffled the bills back and forth between his hands,
relishing the feel of so much wealth. How he had obtained the
money, and the fear of the big Indian, passed. He was far away
from the campsite and no one could follow him in the dark, not
even Mattie Mitchell. Besides, he figured Mitchell would not be
back to his camp that night anyway. The money was his alone. At
first light he would be away and down the river to his canoe, and
he wouldn't stop until he had paddled along the coast to another
community.

The money that filled his hand was all in small denominations.
The American had purposely selected low-value bills, rightly
figuring that larger ones would be difficult to cash here in these
isolated outports. The thief eagerly counted his wondrous booty.
Pulling one bill at a time from his hand, he held it to the light,
said its worth out loud—he wasn't good at counting—placed it
on the ground between his legs, and fetched another one.

Once, he thought he heard a sound coming from the darkness
outside the blazing firelight. He listened for only a second. It was
only the echo of his crackling fire, he thought. For a moment his
old dread of the night returned, but the lure of the money quickly
calmed him and he again returned to his pilfered gains.

By his excited count he had reached $400 and there were
many bills left in his hand. He was rich! It had been easy. Why
the hell was everyone so scared of Mattie Mitchell anyway? His
recent feat against the famed Indian guide gave him a towering
sense of bravado. He felt hungry and reached for a piece of the
stolen meat warming by the edge of the fire.

THE SOUND THAT HAD ALERTED THE THIEF
came from a twig
broken under the weight of Mattie's foot. He would not allow it
to happen again. He steeled himself when, from his position no
more than a few steps away from the man's back, he saw the thief
straighten for a moment in alarm.